When You Wake up and Scream

The cleaning took a lot longer than usual, taking Conán into the evening. He finished cleaning the bathroom in the normal amount of time, but then he had to get the dried blood out of the carpet and off the walls around the area of the murder, which was considerably harder work.

Conán took a good look at his arms when the cleaning was done. He was going to have to hide them. They were scratched, purpled and bruised. Gerald must have been fighting back with some force, and Conán wondered where he had got the strength to inflict so much damage on his victim. He was still shocked, shaken, by the whole experience, and so he decided to cope with it in the only way he could, and that was by grabbing another bottle of alcohol and sitting on the sofa, drinking himself into oblivion while watching the story on the murders being repeated less and less as more stories surfaced, all until Gerald's disappearance hit the headlines. Gerald Doyle. Twenty-two. Another number.

"Just like old Cillian McAfee didn’t want you to be!" Conán shouted at the freezer.

As the drink numbed the tips of Conán's consciousness, an evil and creeping thought filtered into his mind. He smiled to himself and took another swig of alcohol, this time Vodka. He was starting to run low on supplies, and made a mental note to get some more. Right now, however, he had a plan in mind.

It was pure luck that there were no Gardai on Conán's route, as he was driving while heavily intoxicated and he had two severed legs on the backseat of his car. He wanted more excitement. He wanted to start playing.

He left the legs on a random street corner before returning to his car and sniggered as he swerved away. He still felt slightly out of himself, far enough to enjoy what he was doing. If the news wanted a story, they were certainly going to get one.

He got home and got the last bottle of whiskey, Steve and Tom, and then went to he television to watch the newsbreak. He felt excited by the whole thing. The city would be shocked, horrified, scared, and it was all down to him.

"This is going to be quality," Conán told Steve and Tom. "Anyway, how are you pair getting on? Not arguing, I hope? Good. Wait a minute, this could be it … no, damn it. Just Gerald's disappearance again. Well, they'll be finding parts of him soon enough, won't they?"

Conán cackled to himself and took a swig of whiskey. The warm feeling spread through him, distancing him from what had happened, and feeding the ugly thoughts that were taking over his brain. Conán couldn't be bothered to fight them anymore, he would just let them have their way. It had been a long time coming, and now he had killed eleven people, he was never going to have a normal life. Why try to suppress something that he, deep down, enjoyed?

The news broke as Conán watched. The flutter of excitement in him grew as he saw the newsreader's face change, and he leant forward excitedly.

"This is it, guys," he told Steve and Tom. "My fifteen seconds of fame."

"In darker news," the newsreader spoke in her soft voice reserved for the tragedies of the day's news. She was the same newsreader who had read of the earlier disappearance. "The fate of the latest person to have disappeared, Gerald Doyle, has been discovered. Gardai were been disturbed to receive a call of what was originally thought to be a sick practical joke, however, upon arrival on the scene, Gardai saw that the call was genuine. A pair of severed legs, left with a teasing note, were discovered earlier in the evening …"

Conán was grinning like a lunatic, he knew, but he couldn't help it. He watched the news interviewing his friend Cillian McAfee again, the man who was trying to get on his trail, and he watched as the people who had made the discovery were interviewed, and he enjoyed listening to the words used. Shocking. Disturbing. Sick.

"What we can't ignore," Detective McAfee was saying. "Is the fact that this person may be responsible for the deaths of up to nine people now, and whoever it is, is getting more and more violent. We are working as hard as we can to find any leads on the case, and we ask that if anyone saw any of the people who were murdered or who disappeared before the incidents occurred, to please come forward and tell us anything they know. Any tiny, almost insignificant detail may hold a clue, and we need as many as we can get to stop this happening again. This killer is a violent and dangerous person, and the last thing we want is for anyone else to stray across his path."

Conán laughed.

"Have fun with that, Cillian, old buddy," he chuckled. He turned to Steve and Tom. "Come on. Bed time."

He gathered them up and put them back into the freezer, safely hidden beneath several bags of frozen food and tucked in at the back. As he went to walk back to the sofa, the phone rang again. He picked it up, and it was Naoise once more.

"Hello, Naoise," he said brightly.

"How did you know it was going to be me?"

"There's only two people who ring me. You, and my boss. And it sure as Hell isn't going to be my boss."

Naoise laughed.

"You sound a bit chirpier."

"I was never not chirpy."

"Yeah, right, Conán."

"What? I'm always bright and cheerful and full of radiance and light."

"This world that you live in, Conán. I would love to visit. It seems like a cool place."

"Yeah, I'm happier here."

"So, you're feeling better now?"

"I'm fine, like I told you, I was hungover."

"You sound a little drunk now."

"Of course I'm drunk."

"I suppose I would be more confused if you weren't. So, you're all right? Nothing bad happened?"

"No. Why'd you ask that?"

"Just the news about that killer in Dublin has reached down here. I'm worried about you. You're always wondering around alone and drunk, you're just the sort of person this guy targets."

"I'll be fine, Naoise. I'm not that stupid. I can hold my own."

"I'm sure that's what a lot of the others said."

"Trust me, he's not going to get me."

"And what makes you so sure?"

Conán smiled to himself.

"I just know."

"But you don't, though. You don't know where he is."

"Everyone's saying it's a he."

"That's because it's a serial killer, and five times out of six, they're male."

"Under thirty-five and white."

"You remembered. I must have told you that ages ago."

"Well, it was an interesting discussion."

"I can't believe, after all of my obsessing about them, one of my own best friends was murdered by a serial killer. It seems slightly ironic."

"I guess it's pretty hard for you."

"I'm still obsessed with this guy in Dublin. It's just what I'm interested in, right on my doorstep. Trust me to be away from it all."

"I'll be your live link, if you want. As soon as anything happens, I'll ring you and be on breaking news with Conán Connolly. Over to Naoise McCullough with the weather."

"Conán!" Naoise giggled. "How can you always make light of any situation, no matter how serious it is?"

"I guess I just see the bright side," Conán grinned like a TV presenter.

"You're grinning like a TV presenter, aren’t you?"

"You know me too well."

"I was just ringing to make sure you're all right. I know you say you're not that stupid, but I bet all those other people didn’t go out deliberately looking for the killer, either."

"Perhaps that's what I should do? I should stand on the street corner and see if someone tries to grab me, and then I can escape and bring him to justice and be Conán Connolly, the guy who brought the mad killer of elev – nine people to justice."

Conán mentally kicked himself. He should have known he would ramble when he was drunk. He couldn't get so careless!

"Did you just say eleven?"

Conán held the phone away and swore viciously under his breath.

"Yeah," he said when he had done so, sounding casual.

"But it's only nine, is what they're estimating."

"I know. I'm crap with numbers, you should know that."

Conán sensed a slight suspicion in Naoise's voice, and he was angry with himself. He knew it would be hard to pull the wool over the eyes of a young woman who, not only was studying Psychology at University level, but also specialised in the criminal aspect of it.

"I never noticed, actually."

"What's wrong with you?"

"It's just weird, that's all."

"You suggesting I'm a psychopathic serial killer who's leaving people's legs on street corners?"

"You're the one who said it, not me."

Naoise felt strange when she hung up. She knew she was probably overacting, as it had just been a slip of numbers, but eleven and nine were two very different numbers. She would have understood it if he had gotten it wrong one number up or one number down, but … she couldn't explain it. It had just awakened a suspicion inside her that she guessed must have been there all along. Not that Conán was the killer, although that was what her suspicion was taunting her with now, but just a suspicion of Conán full stop. Mary had been right, she was mad to go running around with someone she barely knew.

But she did know Conán now, or at least, she thought she did. What if he was leading some sort of secret double life?

Don't be stupid, told herself. You'd notice if he'd been killing people and cutting their legs off in his flat.

She thought about Mary. She and Conán had had that falling out. Then, mysteriously, she had been found dead. She thought of the homeless guy that had gone for her as well, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled when she thought of Conán pinning him to the floor, his hands around the guy's throat. Wasn't the method of killing strangulation up in Dublin? He had been found dead that morning, too … could it just be a coincidence?

Naoise felt uneasy, all of the things she had learnt about serial killers coming back to haunt her. Conán fit the mark, that was sure. He was practically a loner, but he had the charm and charisma to win people over. He had the stereotypical background, too … the absence of a father figure, the domineering mother …

Naoise shook it out of her head. She was being silly. Her mother always told her that her Psychology got to her head. She was forever diagnosing people with things and pointing people out in the street and saying things like, 'He looks like a serial killer.'

She couldn't picture Conán murdering someone. She had never really seen him being violent … he didn't look the sort. But then she remembered when he had pounced on that homeless man, and she had seen a brief flash of another side to him.

Naoise made a subconscious decision to keep a close eye on Conán when she got back.